Black Forest Cake is the English name of the German dessert Black Forest Cherry-Torte. It consist of various layers of cake and whipping cream and decorated with chocolate shavings and cherries. For me it is a celebration cake and it was on my to do list from long and finally did it successfully last week. I have taken lots of pics and uploaded here for you all to drool over....



It involves the following 3 steps:
Step 1 - Baking the Chocolate Genoise
Step 2 - Layering and assembling
Step 3 - Decorating the cake

want a piece????

Step 1 - Baking the Chocolate Genoise
For Chocolate Genoise (I used Joy of Baking Recipe)

Ingredients:
Hot melted unsalted butter - 3 tbsp
Cake flour - 1/2 cup
Salt - 1/4 tsp
Unsweetened regular or Dutch-processed cocoa powder - 1/3 cup
Eggs - 4 large
Granulated white sugar - 2/3 cup
Pure vanilla extract - 1 tsp


Method:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees C

Grease a 9 inch round cake pan and line the bottom of pan with parchment or wax paper

In a bowl, sift the flour, cocoa powder and salt

In a heatproof bowl whisk the eggs with the sugar. Place over a saucepan of simmering water, whisk continuously  until lukewarm for about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and transfer to a large mixing bowl.

Beat on high speed until the mixture is thick for about 5 minutes (the batter will fall back into the bowl in a ribbon-like pattern)

Add in the vanilla extract and beat again

Then sift about one-third of the flour mixture over the egg mixture and gently fold in using a rubber spatula

Sift and fold in another third, and then fold in the rest

Take 1 cup of the batter and fold it into the melted butter. Then gently fold it into the egg batter

Pour into the pan and smooth out the top. Tap gently

Bake for about 20 - 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean

Cool on a metal rack before removing from pan

The cake can be stored for two days or frozen for a month (I stored mine overnight in the fridge, and did the remaining work the next day)
Step 2 - Layering and assembling

Ingredients:
Granulated sugar - 1/2 cup
Water - 1/2 cup
Whipping Cream - 2 packets
Maraschino cherries in syrup - 1 bottle (I didnot get it so I haven't used it)

Method:
Prepare the sugar syrup by boiling it together till the sugar melts. Keep it aside to cool

Once it cools down mix around 5 tbsp of cherry syrup

Prepare the whipping cream as per instruction and keep in the fridge for around 15 minutes

.....in progress, the perfectly whipped cream

Leaving around 8-10 cherries for garnishing later, chop the remaining cherries into small pieces

Now take the genoise on a cake board and cut into 3 even layers using a long serrated knife

Place the top two layers separately remembering the order in which it was cut

Now on bottom layer which is lying on the cake board, drizzle the entire surface area with around 1/3 of the sugar-cherry syrup

Take 1 cup of the whipped cream, and drop it on the layer and using a frosting spatula, spread it evenly so that it is completely covered. Sprinkle the chopped cherries over this

....in progress, the 1st layer... :)